South Dakota Gov. Noem's National Ad Touts Anti-Trans Sports Bill
backing a bill that would write the language of the executive orders into law. The South Dakota Senate’s State Affairs Committee approved the bill Friday, advancing it to the full Senate.The ad, which debuted Thursday during prime-time news programs around the nation, doesn’t use the words “transgender” or “trans,” instead saying Noem wants to protect girls’ and women’s sports.
It begins, “In South Dakota, only girls play girls’ sports. Why? Because of Gov. Kristi Noem's leadership. Noem has been protecting girls’ sports for years and never backed down.”Announcing the ad on Twitter, she wrote that her bill “will give South Dakota the strongest law protecting female sports in the nation.” LGBTQ+ advocates have long objected to the “protection” characterization, saying it casts girls and women as weak, and disputed the idea that trans females have an inherent and unfair advantage over cisgender ones.
Many scientists dispute this as well.There is no widespread domination of girls’ and women’s sports by trans females, and in most of the states that have considered or passed trans-exclusionary sports bills, politicians couldn’t name a single instance of trans participation causing a problem in their state.Activists quickly denounced Noem’s ad and the legislation itself. “This ad is not just discriminatory, it erases transgender people and dehumanizes them, putting a target on the back of an already vulnerable community,” said a statement from Joni Madison, interim president of the Human Rights Campaign. “Doing so on a national stage — in a brazen attempt to score political points with her base — makes these attacks especially egregious.
